Urban land takeup and the potential for a crisis in the real estate regime Abstract

Urban land takeups have become one of the main problems in Latin American cities within the last twenty years. From a social and critical perspective, the task at hand is double: to discredit common sense views considering take ups are crime offences and fostering poverty criminalization and, at the same time, to critically analyze the relations between the State and the individuals involved in land take ups, so that we may understand the complexity of this problem. By analysing some interviews to individuals involved in social conflicts in the framework of urban land take ups —both by grassroots sectors and municipal officers, and by secondary sources—, to review varied concrete experiences in the city of Cipolletti (Argentina) is proposed, focusing in State intervention forms and discussing whether they are or they are not the sign of a structural crisis within the capitalist property regime under new accumulation conditions.